Chapter 254: Re: I Am An Evil Pen

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Chapter 254: Re: I Am An Evil Pen

Keke had crumbled into powder in the palm of his hand and vanished from his world just like that. Wen Jingrong had no idea how he was supposed to accept that reality.

More than a month after the accident, Ge Junxuan recovered and was discharged from the hospital. He took responsibility for investigating the cause of the crash and launched a frenzied campaign of revenge against Bai Lin, the man who had set everything in motion. He was even willing to sacrifice half his fortune if that was what it took to fight Bai Lin to the bitter end.

Shang Ke and Wen Jingrong had saved his life, yet in the end, his actions had caused Wen Jingrong to lose the person he loved most.

On the surface, nothing seemed wrong with Wen Jingrong. He went to and from work on schedule and handled every matter with his usual methodical efficiency. But Ge Junxuan often saw him reach by habit for the empty cuff at his wrist. Whenever he signed documents, he would stare blankly at his smartpen. Sometimes he even called Ge Junxuan “Keke” by mistake. His appetite faded, he grew thinner by the day, and even sleeping pills could no longer make him sleep at night.

“Brother, pull yourself together! Stop torturing yourself. If it hurts, come drink yourself senseless with me, then get up and live properly!” One day, Ge Junxuan finally snapped and seized him by the collar as he shouted.

“I’m fine.” Wen Jingrong pushed his hand away, his voice cool and his expression indifferent.

“You call this ‘fine’? Sure, your company keeps getting bigger and you’re making more and more money, but when was the last time you slept properly? You work twenty hours a day. Do you think you’re made of iron?”

“Junxuan, you don’t need to worry about me. I’ve been cooperating with psychological treatment recently. I’m sure I’ll be fine soon.” Wen Jingrong sounded perfectly rational, without the slightest visible trace of grief.

Ge Junxuan stared at him for a long moment, then finally gritted his teeth. “Fine. I hope you mean that.”

Wen Jingrong really was undergoing “therapy” once a week. He would lie alone in a comfortable chair and speak to an empty room, recounting every little memory he had of Keke. There was no therapist and no professional guidance—only the sound of his own voice.

After each “session,” Wen Jingrong would go to a mall, visit a smartpen counter, and buy another pen to place in the collection room at home. Over the years, his collection grew to several hundred smartpens.

He knew the behavior was meaningless, but he could not stop himself. Sometimes he even wanted to buy every smartpen in the world. Perhaps his Keke was somewhere among them, waiting for him to find him and bring him home.

Nor did he stop there. He sent people everywhere in search of renowned spiritual practitioners, hoping that someone might be able to summon Shang Ke’s soul.

“A soul-summoning ritual requires a possession left behind by the deceased. Did you bring one, benefactor?” an accomplished monk asked when Wen Jingrong came seeking his help.

Wen Jingrong took an exquisite little box from his pocket and carefully opened it. Inside was the last thing Keke had left him—pen ash.

The monk performed a soul-summoning rite for him, then told him that the deceased man’s soul had already departed from this world.

Wen Jingrong neither grieved nor raged. He simply took the pen ash and continued searching for other masters.

Day after day, year after year, he either encountered frauds or received the same answer: Keke had already left this world.

“Wen Jingrong, give up!” Ge Junxuan watched him repeat the same futile efforts and said painfully, “He’s gone. He’s not here anymore. No matter how long you search, you can’t bring him back. Wen Jingrong, forget him. Find someone else and live a happy life.”

“Junxuan.” Wen Jingrong spoke calmly. “I think I’ve already given all the love I have to one person. I’m afraid I won’t ever love anyone else in this lifetime. I’ve been searching for him for as long as I can remember. I used to think he was only a phantom in my dreams, but one day he truly appeared. Do you know how happy I was? That joy, that sense of fulfillment—it was worth giving everything for. So I won’t stop looking for him. Not until the end of my life.”

That was how Wen Jingrong persuaded Ge Junxuan—and how he persuaded himself.

Yes. He would not give up. He believed that one day, Keke would return.

Holding on to that hope, Wen Jingrong endured one lonely, interminable day and night after another.

The Wenshang Group expanded steadily, its wealth and prestige rapidly rising into the world’s top ranks and creating a legendary story of a self-made empire. Yet Wen Jingrong continued searching for the one person he wanted beside him to share that glory.

Then one day, Wen Jingrong finally encountered a genuine master. The man asked him, “What relationship do you have with the person you’re searching for?”

“He’s my lover.”

“You love each other deeply?”

“Yes.”

“Then do you know that he isn’t an ordinary mortal?”

A spark lit in Wen Jingrong’s eyes. Suppressing the surge of emotion in his chest, he replied, “Yes. I know.”

“He is a being of baleful energy, while you possess a body radiant with an aura of fortune. I’m surprised the two of you could become lovers at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“The aura of fortune surrounding you comes from the good deeds accumulated by your ancestors. It protects you with wealth and prosperity throughout your life and keeps evil from touching you. Your lover, however, carried baleful energy. By all reason, he should never have been able to approach you.”

“And if he did approach me?”

“Then your aura of fortune would purify him, and he would suffer as though his entire body were burning.”

Wen Jingrong’s expression changed abruptly. “You mean that whenever he stayed beside me, he was constantly suffering from being purified by my aura of fortune?”

“Yes. Which is why I think he must have loved you very much. Otherwise, he would never have risked having his soul scattered, endured that purification day after day, and still insisted on remaining with you.”

A violent buzzing filled Wen Jingrong’s head. His heart trembled so hard that for a moment he could barely breathe.

He had never noticed. Keke’s instinctive resistance whenever Wen Jingrong drew close, the fleeting furrows of his brow, those momentary flashes of pain… At first, Wen Jingrong had simply thought Keke disliked him. Later, Keke accepted him. He accepted the close embraces and gentle caresses and never again showed discomfort in front of him. While Wen Jingrong had been immersed in sweetness, Keke had silently endured the pain his presence caused.

Aura of fortune? Baleful energy? Wen Jingrong desperately wanted to denounce the man for spouting nonsense, yet a faint voice inside him insisted that every word was true.

Everything he had stubbornly held on to seemed to collapse at once. He had thought he had given Shang Ke everything, only to realize that he had been completely ignorant of what Shang Ke had given him. Shang Ke had always left the best for him, without a single complaint from beginning to end.

How could he have endured so much and still acted as though nothing mattered? When Wen Jingrong could not see him, how had he endured that pain?

“Leaving you may have been a kind of release for him.”

Before Wen Jingrong left, the master said those words to him.

That single sentence shattered Wen Jingrong’s remaining hope and pushed him into an abyss.

Leaving him was a release?

Had his love given Keke nothing but pain?

Had all those years of searching been for nothing more than dragging Keke back to his side so he could suffer that burning agony again?

Then why was he still searching so desperately?

Would it not be better to set Keke free—and set himself free as well…?

Wen Jingrong smiled, and the smile was merciless.

No. He would not let go.

No matter how much it hurt, he would never let go. Keke had chosen him. Even through pain, Keke had still chosen him.

So Wen Jingrong would make the same choice.

For Keke, he was willing to give up a lifetime of wealth and prosperity and erase every trace of the aura of fortune surrounding him.

If Keke belonged to the realm of baleful things, then Wen Jingrong would refuse to remain a man protected by fortune.

Wen Jingrong began using his wealth and connections to establish illicit relationships with senior government officials, colluding with people above and below him.

The result was that every official who became involved with him fell from power one after another, while Wen Jingrong alone remained standing. Not only that, large numbers of his own trusted people gained firm footholds in politics and built factions and influence of their own.

Only then did Wen Jingrong truly understand the power of his aura of fortune. No matter what he did, disaster somehow turned into opportunity and every road ended in victory. The more recklessly he tried to ruin himself, the more wealth and power he gained instead.

The aura of fortune surrounding him became a curse: it gave him a brilliant life and condemned him to a lifetime of loneliness.

Even when he reached old age, he never found the person he had spent his life searching for.

Only when he finally closed his eyes did he allow himself to admit it: his Keke had already left this world.

He had sustained himself with a lie all the way to the end of his life.

Keke, will there be another life for us?

As his life faded, he seemed to hear Keke smiling as he said, “Jingrong, I’ll see you in our next life.”

All right. I’ll see you in the next life.

A relieved smile appeared on Wen Jingrong’s face. Like a child at peace, he quietly fell asleep…

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